Bikes, bicycling, and road safety.

Midtown Greenway Reroutes Ahoy

This coming summer – and possibly in following years – the Midtown Greenway will have some reroutes and access point closures near Lake Calhoun. The reason? Minneapolis can either proactively replace a decaying sewer line, or face reroutes as a result of raw sewage getting free.

Obviously, fixing is a far superior choice to having raw sewage in parks, backyards, and the lakes.

Greenway users will not, for two months this summer, be able to enter and exit the trail onto Dean Parkway. Crews will need to dig around the ramp there to properly bury the pipe. Gordon said he is asking the Hennepin County Regional Rail Authority about making a temporary entrance one block east at Thomas Avenue.

Without the Dean Parkway ramp, bicyclists will have to go west to Whole Foods or east to the Lagoon to get on or off the trail.

In a few places, the repair work will require digging under the Greenway. Route-arounds will be constructed to allow traffic to get through. I expect that those spots will demand some etiquette from cyclists and pedestrians alike, as such re-routes tend to be narrower.

Julie Kosbab is an online marketing consultant and active transportation advocate living in Anoka County, Minnesota. She was one of Minnesota's only League of American Bicyclists Certified Instructors when certified in 2005. She is a past member of the National Bicycle Tour Directors Association. She has 2 children and 4 bicycles. Find her on Twitter as @betweenstations.